


The Girl Who Swallowed Her Jewels

by MaxStef



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Memories, Closeted Character, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, One Shot, Sailor Moon References, TW: Misgendering, Trans Character, tw: Reference to the Holocaust, tw: choking hazards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 12:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17683526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaxStef/pseuds/MaxStef
Summary: "She was a boy, after all.Everyone said so, so it must have been true.And boys did not wear dresses and boys did not play with dolls and boys did not cry so much, even when they were very tired, even when the scrape on their knee was the worst they'd ever felt, so sometimes she thought she would rather not be a boy at all, but that would never be allowed. All she could do was imagine."





	The Girl Who Swallowed Her Jewels

Once when the girl was very young, her Bubbe told her about how her great grandmother swallowed her jewels as the Nazis came for her. How it was better to hide her treasures in her body rather than let them be stolen along with her humanity.  
The girl listened with fascination, though she never truly understood stories like these, and asked about it again hours later, running to Bubbe in her chair.  
“Did she get the jewels again after she swallowed them?” She asked, her four-year-old mind unable to find an answer. “Did they stay in her tummy forever?”  
Bubbe smiled the way that Bubbe's everywhere smiled at questions like this and she held the girl's cheek in her hand and said, “Don't you worry about that, Julian.” And that was that.   
Julian.  
A boy's name.  
She was a boy, after all.   
Everyone said so, so it must have been true.   
And boys did not wear dresses and boys did not play with dolls and boys did not cry so much, even when they were very tired, even when the scrape on their knee was the worst they'd ever felt, so sometimes she thought she would rather not be a boy at all, but that would never be allowed. All she could do was imagine.   
Only when she visited her cousin, the daughter of her mother's sister, whose name was Young-Hee but who everyone called Angela and who knew nothing of swallowing jewels, could the girl touch girlhood. When Angela brought out all her toys, her dress-up clothes and play makeup, and made the girl into a doll of her own, her Julia, in sparkled fabric and blue eyeshadow.   
And Mommy would come to get her in the evening and laugh and laugh, “Julian, what did she do to you?” And wipe all the pretty colors from her face.   
Once she stole a necklace from Angela's room.   
She didn't mean to take it, but she put it in her pocket when no one was looking and when she got home she found it was still there so she supposed it was hers now.   
It was a locket, actually, designed like something out of Sailor Moon, and she sat on the floor and played with the latch, open and closed and open and closed, until finally Mommy noticed.   
“What do you have?” She asked from the kitchen doorway, soup simmering still in the pot behind her.   
The girl closed her hands tight around the locket, hoping it couldn't be seen.   
“Is it something of Angela's?” Mommy went on, stepping closer and holding out her hand. “We don't need you playing with that.”   
The girl shook her head and didn't know why.  
“Julian, please,” Mommy said, impatient as she always was, one more step.  
And before she could touch her the girl stuffed the locket into her mouth, and swallowed.


End file.
